It may be often necessary to protect large collections of stored data (hard disks, solid state disks, flash memory, etc) from tampering, unauthorized extraction, or/and unauthorized use of pertinent content information. For large information storage volumes, destruction of the full volume may not be practical, economical, or/and reliable. Several embodiments of current time pertain to methods and apparatus for the encryption of the data and storage of the encryption key in a secure device that can be readily destructively obliterated such that it may be substantially impossible to retrieve the encryption key and further extremely improbable to retrieve the encrypted data from the full volume of the system without the destroyed encryption key. It is well known that sufficiently large but manageable encryption key sizes (256 bit today but could easily use 512 or 1024 bit if needed) can be used by relatively modest processors to encrypt and decrypt data at manageable speeds and to make the data substantially unencryptable without the key to the extent that the most powerfully known computers would require many orders of magnitude longer time periods to decrypt the data without the key.
It can be noted that data storage devices prearranged to store sensitive information may need to be decommissioned or/and to be made available for other uses. Complete erasure of data from many storage systems may be substantially unachievable because of remainance issues in storage media (e.g. common hard disks and solid state memories). Under certain circumstances, an excessive number of read-write cycles may be required on each data storage location to safely sanitize a data storage system for an acceptable level of protection. This can be very costly and subject to possible errors and risks that all or at least an effective portion sensitive data may not be removed or/and obliterated from the systems. Various embodiments of the present invention may provide relatively secure single point solution that substantially instantly removes all (rewritable, contextual, and structural) data from a storage volume. In particular, substantially all of the data on the storage volume may be encrypted with at least one key that may be stored (integrally or/and on segment bay segment basis) on at least constituent or/and associated information devices of the secure system. The physical destruction and obliteration of the information regions where the at least one key may be stored may, substantially in real time, make the protected data on the storage volume irretrievable or/and unusable.
Often, encryption systems management and securing or the encryption may represent a sensitive link in the security of the system. Users may store copies of passwords from which keys are generated in inappropriate or/and insecure locations, the key may be intercepted in system transmission, or an individual under duress may be forced to reveal the key (password) against their wishes. Different embodiments of the present invention may contribute to alleviation of such problems by offering a mode of operation where the key may be randomly self-generated inside the secure system and only stored within the volume of a self-destructible encryption key container. Substantially all encryption and decryption of data to and from the secure system may be conducted with the internal key. If the system is tampered with or/and if the user feels that the data may be immanently compromised the secure system or/and the secure system user can initiate destruction of the key container such that the effective portion of stored information becomes permanently obliterated. No amount of coercion of the user may retrieve the secured information. Thus, an effective protection for loss in the field of sensitive systems such as intelligence operative equipment, surveillance aircraft, etc. may be effectuated.
One common problem with secure systems may pertain to desirability to directly and unambiguously know the state of the system's security: Has the system been tampered with? Has all sensitive information been erased? Has the user's command to destroy the stored information been successful? etc. Some embodiments of the current invention pertain to such problems by providing a direct method for convening information about the state of the system security. By obliterating a small information containing region of a secure device and making that destruction directly observable or/and plainly visible to visual inspection, for example via a observation window to the information containing region it may be possible for practitioners to unambiguously discern that the information containing region have been destroyed along with the key that was stored in it as well as the information that may be encrypted with it. The observer can instantly know that substantially all of the many hundreds of gigabytes of data have been destroyed—all instantly, without the need of any additional hardware, software, or/and analysis. Furthermore, this can be surmised by non-specialist personnel that are not trained in the particulars of data security. In addition, different embodiments of the current invention may also provide for further methods that may support, supplement or substitute for visual inspection providing an effective and direct conveyance of the status of the date security in terms of the destruction of the information containing region.